O no! Oprah ending show in 2011 after 25 seasons

View full size(AP File Photo)Oprah Winfrey: Talk show superstar plans to announce the final date for her show during a live broadcast on Friday, Harpo Productions Inc. said, bringing an end to what has been television's top-rated talk show for more than two decades.

CHICAGO -- "The Oprah Winfrey Show," an iconic broadcast
that grew over two decades into a daytime television powerhouse and the
foundation of a multibillion-dollar media empire, will end its run in
2011 after 25 seasons on the air, Winfrey's production company said
Thursday night.

Winfrey plans to announce the final date for her
show during a live broadcast on Friday, Harpo Productions Inc. said,
bringing an end to what has been television's top-rated talk show for
more than two decades, airing in 145 countries worldwide and watched by
an estimated 42 million viewers a week in the U.S. alone.

A Harpo
spokeswoman declined to comment Thursday on Winfrey's future plans
except to say that "The Oprah Winfrey Show" will not be transferred to
cable television.

Winfrey is widely expected to start up a new
talk show on OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network, a much-delayed joint
venture with Discovery Communications Inc. that is expected to debut in
2011. OWN is to replace the Discovery Health Channel and will debut in
some 74 million homes. An OWN spokeswoman declined comment Thursday.

CBS
Television Distribution, which distributes "The Oprah Winfrey Show" to
more than 200 markets blanketing the United States, held out hope that
it could continue doing business with Winfrey, perhaps producing a new
show out of its studios in Los Angeles.

"We have the greatest
respect for Oprah and wish her nothing but the best in her future
endeavors," the unit of CBS Corp. said in a statement. "We know that
anything she turns her hand to will be a great success. We look forward
to working with her for the next several years, and hopefully
afterwards as well."

Winfrey's 24th season opened earlier this
year with a bang, as she drew more than 20,000 fans to the city's
Magnificent Mile on Michigan Avenue for a Chicago block party with the
Black Eyed Peas.

She followed up with a series of blockbuster
interviews — Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield, exclusives with singer
Whitney Houston and ESPN's Erin Andrews, and just this week, former
Alaska governor, GOP vice presidential candidate and best-selling
author Sarah Palin. She found time between shows to lobby the
International Olympic Committee in Denmark for Chicago's failed bid to
host the 2016 Olympics.

The loss of "The Oprah Winfrey Show"
would be a blow to CBS Corp. because it earns a percentage of hefty
licensing fees from TV stations that use it.

On a conference call
with analysts two weeks ago, CBS Chief Executive Leslie Moonves said
the contract with the show ran through most of 2011 and "if there's a
negative impact, it wouldn't hit us until '12."

CBS continues to
sell several top shows into syndication, however, including "Wheel of
Fortune" and "Jeopardy." But many TV stations are struggling with
falling advertising revenue and were unlikely to pay the same fees as
in the past for Winfrey's show, which has seen ratings slip 7 percent
from a year ago and saw its average viewership slip below 7 million
last season.

Winfrey started her broadcasting career as a
teenager in Nashville, Tenn., reading the news at WVOL. Two years
later, Winfrey started co-anchoring news broadcasts on WTVF-TV in
Nashville. In 1976 she moved to Baltimore to anchor newscasts at WJZ-TV
before becoming host of the local talk show "People Are Talking."

In
1984, she relocated to Chicago to host WLS-TV's morning talk show "A.M.
Chicago" — the show was became "The Oprah Winfrey Show" one year later.
She set up Harpo the following year and her talk show went into
syndication, rising to become one of the most successful in the history
of broadcasting.

Powered by the show's staggering success,
Winfrey built a wide-ranging media empire. Harpo Studios produces shows
hosted by Dr. Phil McGraw and celebrity chef Rachael Ray, her "book
club" selections produce instant best-sellers, and "O, The Oprah
Magazine" was the nation's 7th most popular magazine in the first half
of 2009.

"I came from nothing," Winfrey wrote in the 1998 book
"Journey to Beloved." ''No power. No money. Not even my thoughts were
my own. I had no free will. No voice. Now, I have the freedom, power,
and will to speak to millions every day — having come from nowhere."

Earlier
this year, Forbes scored Winfrey's net worth at $2.7 billion, even as
the magazine knocked her from atop its list of the world's most
powerful celebrities. The honor went to Angelina Jolie, but Winfrey was
still No. 2 on the annual Celebrity 100 list — and the top earner at
$275 million.